Club Soda at UWM Highlights a New Trend Among Gen Z

Dirk Swayne and his brother Decklan are both undergraduate students at UW-Milwaukee and are both members of Club Soda, an on campus organization dedicated to sobriety. 

“It’s not really structured, it actually used to be called sober social to indicate that you’re just there to hangout with people who don’t drink,” said Decklan Swayne. 

Club Soda is a social gathering of people who are looking for a space to spend time in that doesn’t require drinking, indicative of a growing trend of young people who are focusing on living sober and building communities that reflect sobriety.

Club Soda is the only student organization on campus geared specifically towards sobriety, but is part of a larger group of sober spaces around Milwaukee.

“It is a space to meet like-minded people,” said Dirk Swayne. “Alcohol is something that I would like to try once, but I just don’t want to hang out with people who are party animals.”

Young people who know others that drink alcohol often tend to have a weaker desire to try it. Friends and family have a big impact on how influential alcohol will be amongst younger generations.

“I have several friends outside of college who have three beers in the shower after they get off work,” said Decklan Swayne. “There’s some family history with drinking and I just see them drinking a lot and I don’t feel a need for that, it seems like a lot of money.”

The justification behind not drinking alcohol blends between emotional and pragmatic reasoning. Seeing the influence that alcohol can have on others can be off putting, alcohol itself is also seen as a financial strain.

“When I do go on social media I feel like a lot of people are tired of seeing self destructive habits,” said Dirk Swayne. “People want to get better and want real connection with the people they care about.”

Social pressures play a big role in influencing young people’s drinking habits. Social media sites push wellness trends and healthier life choices resulting in participatory events, such as dry January, an event where an individual doesn’t drink alcohol for the whole month. However, social media does heavily push food and beverage content to young users, according to the NielsenIQ 2024 trend report.  

“When I first got into the music scene, I would drink at shows to ease the anxiety of being in an unfamiliar space,” said Gina Sfaciotti, founder of the local sober music venue Door Number 3. “Having that connection with alcohol would often cause me to over consume and end up with little memory of the night, the bands and any connections I made.”

Sfaciotti is another UWM student who got involved with the local music scene, where the venues are friendly towards alcohol. 

“When I started to cut back I noticed this was the case at a lot of venues, especially house venues,” said Sfaciotti. “I wanted my venue to be sober so it could be open to all ages, I live in a neighborhood with quite a few middle and high school aged kids and I think exposure to a local music scene is so amazing.”

Third spaces are spaces outside of school, work and home where individuals can meet and connect. These spaces are in high demand for people practicing sobriety, especially in Wisconsin, where many people choose a bar as their third space.

“Wisconsin is notorious for being the alcoholic capital of the U.S, there’s a vicious cycle of people who aren’t comfortable socially and go out to drink to fix that anxiety which then repeats,” said Izzy Brotzman, who has been sober for over a year and volunteers for Door Number 3. “We lack those third spaces outside of college and the workplace, where we can interact with other people devoid of alcohol.”

Younger generations have developed better support structures to recognize when their alcohol consumption has gone too far. The rise in mental health awareness amongst the youth developed the ability to understand when something is a problem.

“I think Gen Z is a generation that is cognisant of their issues, people are able to identify them and recognize the self-destructive patterns from previous generations to not make those same mistakes,” said Brotzman. “I’ve seen this in friends who have indulged too much and say that they don’t want to do that again.”

Sobriety is an avenue for younger people to create third spaces that grow community without additional social pressures.

“Door Number 3 is a natural result of having more people who want to be sober, but still want to interact with people,” said Brotzman. “I think we will see a growing trend of these sorts of spaces as more people go for sobriety.”